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Now More Than Ever: Obama's War

A little over a year ago, I spent a month with American soldiers along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan. It's strange to think of it now, but back then the soldiers still called Afghanistan "the forgotten war." It was off the front pages. America was caught up in the excitement of the presidential campaign. General David McKiernan, the then ISAF commander, was in the process of a strategic review, preparing a new plan for the next administration. He wanted more troops and more resources; he said he didn't have enough men. Violence was bad. There were only two safe roads out of Kabul. I had the misfortune of witnessing two suicide bombings and the bad luck of being along the border during a Taliban attack.

When GQ published my story four months later, in the spring of 2009, the "forgotten war" had quietly become Obama's War.

First, he ordered an additional 17,000 troops. Then in May he fired McKiernan, replacing him with General Stanley McChyrstal. Obama ordered up two more strategic reviews, while fighting over the summer left over 80 Americans dead. Hamid Karzai's re-election was, unsurprisingly, corrupt and fraudulent. The extra troops Obama had already sent weren't making the war go away, much to his administration's surprise.

So Obama had to make a decision—which we outlined in the story months before his own advisors even started having the discussion. Would he refocus the mission on counter terrorism? Or would he fully embrace a large scale counterinsurgency, and sign us up for many more years of conflict? With his speech at West Point this week, Obama decided the latter, and I can't say that I'm surprised. The political pressure from the Pentagon to escalate the war was too great. The 30,000 extra troops Obama plans to send to Afghanistan, a tripling of U.S. forces since he became president, officially puts his signature on the war. Obama succumbed to that feeling of inevitability that the story details—there's something about Afghanistan that just keeps pulling you in, and pulling you in, against all logic or common sense. It's a kind of strange Central Asian vortex. I don't quite know why, or how to explain it, but in Obama's War I gave it a try.

If you're interested in more on Afghanistan, my ongoing commentary on everything war-related can be found at my blog on